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Monday, January 23, 2017

strange beings come out to make mischief in the weirding light of the spiral moon

A super-pared down 5e-ish thing for Flowerland/Weird Florida. Checks are the typical 1d20+ability score mod+proficiency bonus (if applicable), but classes are more thematically defined packages of proficiencies instead of discrete lists of skills and abilities. Magic is an unreliable accretion of superstitions rather than a very formalized list of abilities, and HP is a small, easy come/easy go buffer between mobility and death. All of this should fit the mood better than the more high fantasy feel of rules as written 5e D&D.

ABILITY SCORED

Roll 3d6 for Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Use the following ability score modifiers. If your modifiers have a negative total, you can reroll all of your ability scores. Once you have a viable character, you can swap two ability scores of your choosing.

HIT POINTS

Don't exist. We are using the endurance/stopwatch system. Everyone starts out with 6+CON mod EP.

You can recover EP equal to your hazard die by resting an exploration turn (triggers an encounter check). Each time you rest, your max EP reduces by 1. Eating a ration lets you recover EP without losing any points from your maximum.You can't take a rest in situations that are draining your EP.

You recover all of your EP, and you max EP returns to normal, when you take a long rest in a safe place.

You gain +1 max EP when you level up.

CLASS/BACKGROUND/PROFICIENCY
Your proficiency bonus is +2, and increases by +1 every 4th level. Add your proficiency bonus to tasks your class is good at. The listed die value is your Hazard Die, which determines how much EP you can recover when you rest and how much your weapon attacks deal.

MAGIC/RITUALS
Anything that we would recognize as a spell from D&D is far beyond the capability of humans, and generally requires the intercession of a god or demon. Rituals are slower and quieter and subtler, but they are also powerful rules the supernatural world must abide by. Anyone can try to perform a ritual, but people who spend their time close to the supernatural (witches and clerics) are better at them.Players do not get to see the list of rituals. They discover rituals as rewards, by accident, in books, through rumors, by joining factions. Some are common and most people know about, some are kept secret by powerful organizations. Players will be part of an adventuring Company that will help explain why a new crop of characters might know a bunch of weird rituals after the last group got a TPK.

[simple] rituals are easy to do. You just need the right component and the right action, like throwing salt on a monster or chanting a certain phrase. Some simple rituals people perform on accident, and this can be dangerous.

[complex] rituals are hard. They require a lot of practice and knowledge. Making a talisman, reciting a long passage of holy writ, or inscribing a pentagram just right are all complex rituals. They take a month to learn from a tutor or a text. Complex rituals are easy to perform incorrectly, and this can be dangerous.

[apotropaic] rituals are the rites clerics use to drive back the supernatural and defend humanity. When they require a check, use WIS. When they require a saving throw, the DC is 8+WIS mod (+proficiency bonus if ritual caster is a cleric)

[dark] rituals are the rites witches use to have their way with the world. When they require a check, use CHA. When they require a saving throw,
the DC is 8+CHA mod (+proficiency bonus if ritual caster is a witch). These rituals are often illegal.

Players can perform impromptu rituals if they make sense. If someone is bitten on the arm by a werewolf and the cleric makes a rosary tourniquet, it is ritually potent enough to work even though it's not listed below. These might have high DCs, or the victim might get advantage on the saving throw.

purity rite [apotropaic] [simple] Cast salt on an impure creature (devils, demons, undead, fey, etc). They must make a CHA saving throw or flee for a turn.

warding rite [apotropaic] [simple] Pour salt in a circle around you. Impure creatures must make a CHA saving throw to cross it. Lasts until disturbed or you leave the circle.

nazar [apotropaic] [complex] DC 14 Spend a long rest and 10 gp making a blue eye bead. Anyone who carries it will have advantage on saving throws versus curses. It cracks the first time its bearer is the target of a curse, whether or not they succeed the saving throw. If a would-be creator fails a check to make a nazar, all nazars they have already made lose their power.

casket rite [apotropaic] [simple] Seal a coffin with silver nails. If the interred has the will and ability to rise as a restless corpse, they must make a CHA saving throw to succeed and will not be able to try again if they fail. If a witch is trying to raise them, they must make a CHA saving throw before they can attempt it, and cannot try again if they fail.

revenant rite [dark] Bury someone with a smoldering piece of cypress charcoal on their chest, and they will return as a restless corpse. If they don't want to come back, they cane make a WIS saving throw.

ill rite [dark] [simple] Cast grave dirt on a human as you whisper a cursed syllable. They must make a WIS saving throw or suffer a wasting illness, losing 1 EP a day until they die.

rite of calling [dark] [apotropaic] [simple] Summon a corpse by calling its name at night at the edge of the woods, the mouth of a cave, the bank of a river, or the shore of a lakeThey may or may not be friendly, and if they don't want to come they may make a CHA saving throw to avoid the summons.

red ribbon rite [dark] [simple] tie a red ribbon to a bound or incapacitated spirit (fiend, fey, elemental, undead, celestial). It must make a CHA saving throw or consider you its master. It can remake the saving throw every time your orders humiliate it, place it in danger, or require it to violate its nature.

shrine rite [dark] [apotropaic] [complex] spend a turn building an impromptu shrine from ritual stones to a spirit (fiend, fey, elemental, undead, celestial) to communicate with it directly. You can ask it to cast a spell, perform a task, guard you, reveal a secret, etc. It may or may not be friendly. Each spirit has its own shrine rite, and they must be learned separately. Ritual stones may be reused.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

a 5e monster for weird florida. Been thinking about Pearce's Monstrum 1 and Monstrum 2 posts, and while I haven't faithfully applied those principles here, I wanted something that didn't immediately and obviously fit into the D&D taxonomy (in some ways it doesn't matter if your kobolds are dogmen or lizard people or birdlings or shivering clouds of diamond dust if players know that it's a fodder enemy in the same genus as goblins and bullywugs).

~~~

you might think it's a coyote at first when you see it running down the trail--its skeleture is right, and it has that canine posture on all fours, but then it rears back on its hind legs and then keeps going, sprinting like a human, reaching for you with its sharp fingers. it looks more like a person up close, but its mouth is a little too wide and its teeth are far too sharp, and when you cut it, its blood is pink and viscous, like real blood mixed with milkweed sap.

Weird. The dweller can cast one of the following spells per short rest. Use WIS as spellcasting ability score. Its spell save DC is 14 and its spell attack bonus is +4

as entangle. The dweller gently palpates the ground; if it is stone it flexes like soft flesh, if it is dirt or sand the dweller reaches below the surface and manipulates something unseen there. Slender pale arms churn through the ground, delicate strong hands with opalescent fingernails drag down whatever they find.

as fog cloud. The dweller scores the earth deep with its claw and black smoke boils up out of the gash.

as unseen servant. There is the faint smell of cut grass and open earth, pollen and tiny insects hang in the air.

as thunderwave. The dweller throws back its head and roars like a thousand thousand cicadas, it's the worst sound you've ever heard, you can taste it in your teeth, feel it blast through the fine bones of your jaw and ears.

Pact. Once per day: Three dwellers within 5 ft of each other can use their action in the same turn to summon a demon if they are outside in a wilderness area. Roll or choose based on situation, all have fiend type. Demons have their own initiative and act in the interests of the dwellers unless separated from their summoners, in which case they act of their own free will.

sunstroke demon (as yellow faerie dragon) a ragged coyote corpse leaking mirage-shimmer from the rents in its hide, running weightlessly across the ground, flitting from branch to branch as easily as a crow.

anhinga demon (as spectator) has a 60 ft swim speed. it coils through the air like an eel through water, braided serpentine bodies throwing off coils and wings that dissolve into black feathers as fast as they form. its conjoined heads are spotted with angry red eyes, each stare carrying a different curse.

ash demon (as azer) it could almost be a charred corpse and often disguises itself as one, but its skin is thick like charcoal. when roused the red glow of its internal flame can be seen through the cracks in its skin, and its breath is heavy with smoke.

There are dwellers in other houses, too. The Petal House Dwellers have the character of both spiders and moths, and their magic is white and filamentous. The River House Dwellers are hulking and patient and make familiars of toads and crocodiles. There is a Pure House, too, a House long ago and far away and high above, with dwellers of infinite beauty and cruelty, who drink up the creatures of the earth, who would pull apart the world like a ripe fruit and eat it if they could.

Thursday, January 5, 2017

hey guys. it's certainly been a while. i've been thinking about a weird fantasy florida, recently, out in the palm scrub, where everything is mean and sharp and unfriendly and unnavigable and really kind of beautiful in a careless sort of way.

sinnerher flesh moves like fire on her bones, her hair roils like a plume of smoke from her head, her feet barely touch the water as she strides across it and you smell the black magic in the air: hot metal and raw meat and ozone.

Each sinner knows a random cleric spell with a level equal to their HD. They can cast it at will.

Sinners cannot cross lines of salt or enter holy ground or consecrated buildings like churches, and they must flee the sounds of church bells and calls to prayer as if they had failed a Morale check.

Sinners can walk on water, walls, and ceilings; they are supernaturally light when it suits them, and any surface or structure that can support the weight of a crow will also support a sinner.

corpsethey are pale, luxuriously dressed in black veils and black lace,
they move in groups of two or three, they dart about close to the ground
in the edges of your vision. they never seem to be what they should, seeming to be very large and very far away, or else very small and very close; you always have to reach farther than you think to strike them with your weapon, but they can just raise their hand and touch you all the same.

Each corpse can cast a random magic-user spell with a level equal to their HD. They can cast it at will.

If a corpse sees an open grave (dug for the purposes of burying someone, at least 6 feet deep, a burial marker at the head of the grave), it must climb inside and lie down. If it hears properly recited funeral rites (INT check and a round of effort), it must make a Morale check. Corpses cannot cross lines of salt.

As long as nobody can see its point of departure or arrival, a corpse can teleport to any location in 120'.

palm devila figure standing at the edge of the pines, a little too tall to be
human, the contours of its body beneath its ragged coat too long and
slender, it's holding a palmetto frond in front of its face, and when it
turns to you, all the leaves on all the trees as far as you can see
rattle, malicious and filled with volition

a palm devil's face is indescribable; should anyone see it they must Save vs Magic or become Feebleminded. They will transform into a sinner by midnight of the following Sunday unless restored by Remove Curse.

Can cast Gust of Wind, Move Earth, and Plant Growth twice each per fight.

Can fly by riding its palm frond.

In a palm devil's hands, a palm frond functions as a vorpal axe and can easily cut through any mundane substance.

venomous augurysomeone has nailed a huge rattlesnake to the trunk of a dead pine tree at regular intervals, tied lengths of red silk to each nail head. it looks at you with wet human eyes and tells you something horrible.

the venomous augury knows everything, probably. A player can ask it anything and it will give them the true answer. This can amount to a wish--ask it where the elixir of eternal life it, and it will tell you, whether or not there was an elixir before you asked. However, every answer introduces an evil equal in influence or power to the wealth or knowledge being sought. Ask "where is the woman who will save the world?" and the augury is liable to answer "in the house of the man who will one day destroy it"

once someone has asked the augury a question, it forevermore appears to them as a stinking dead rattlesnake grotesquely nailed to a tree.

prophet of muda huge hairless face emerges from the muck in front of you. it does not bother to turn its head, but swivels its bulging yellow eyes towards you as it begins to hum a hymn

the prophet of mud is a third level cleric and knows Bless, Command, and Augury and can cast spells from its head or its hands.

the prophet can emerge from any body of mud. it can reach its hands up from any body of mud or murky water that is contiguous with the mud it head is in.

the prophet's head and two hands get their own turn in the initiative order. it can only see what its head sees, naturally, but will feel things out with one hand to help the other.

the prophet can spend a round singing hymns to cast Rock To Mud at will.

motherthere is a mother deep beneath the earth, she once had a shell of many hard plates and swam with many sharp legs and saw with a constellation of many watchful eyes. she died long ago, when this land was still a sea, but she is still here, she is a hollow in the bedrock far below, a long spiral in the dark. sometimes she tells the land what it used to be, and when she does it listens.